How Israel Is Once Again Redefining the Terms of Peace

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Israeli governments have mastered the technique of pushing Palestinians to the brink, through collective punishment, brutal military policies, house-destruction and so on. However, the implicit objective of the Israeli policy has not been exclusively aimed at subduing Palestinians. Its ultimate aim has been the expropriation of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories of the 1967 border... One must also remember that even in the most radicalized and revolutionary phases of their modern history, Palestinians demanded barely 22 percent of the total size of historic Palestine as was defined prior to the creation of Israel. These demands frustrated Israel, who continued to infuse false and outlandish claims throughout the Western media that the lightly armed Palestinian uprisings (the 1987 Intifada’s most universal weapons were slingshots hurling rocks at Israeli attack-helicopters) posed a threat to the very existence of the state of Israel... Nonetheless, reality on the ground still serves the same set of beliefs carried by past Israeli governments as reflected in their policies. For example, despite the frequent utilization of the term “peace” by Israeli officials, on both sides of the political spectrum, especially after the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993, there was an intensive Israeli campaign to drive Palestinians out of their land, to expand the settlements, to expropriate large chunks of the West Bank as “security zones” and to further alienate and completely fence off occupied East Jerusalem. According to the records of Israel’s Peace Now movement, the number of illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories has at least doubled since the signing of the “historic” Oslo agreement.Israel has never changed it’s ultimate objective. We know this because Israel’s illegal practices on the ground have continued unabated. Granting Palestinians long-denied rights, cohesive territorial sovereignty and honoring international law was never on the Israeli agenda. Most likely these issues will continue to be disregarded until the political imbalances (read the US government’s dishonest role in the conflict) are rectified.